Author: Robert A. McReynolds

The United States is embroiled in multiple military excursions across the Middle East and recently President Donald Trump has expressed his desire that two of those excursions be wound down. Of course, this is a reference to Trump’s suggestion that the United States get out of Afghanistan and end our limited military operations in Syria. These utterances were made a few weeks ago and there has been no action, so the question become, is President Trump serious about winding those two operations down?

Beginning with Afghanistan, it is important to do a very quick rehash of what this war is about. It was the response by the George W. Bush administration for the al Qa’ida inspired attacks on September 11, 2001. That really does not need to be covered. What is more pressing is that just a decade ago (yeah it doesn’t feel that long to me either) this war was called the “good war” by then presidential candidate, Senator Barrack Obama. Obama’s campaign positioned itself to end the operations in Iraq and focus on Afghanistan, where the real battle was since that is where 9/11 was planned (it wasn’t, that was Kuala Lumpur). This resulted in an additional 33,000 military personnel being shipped to Afghanistan to add to the numbers that were already there. By 2012, the Afghan Surge was ended and those troops were brought home. Did it accomplish anything?

That depends on when the evidence is examined. At certain points in time, one might point to the decrease in violence in the souther provinces. However, that violence ticked up when the surge ended. At the political level, it created a huge backlash from the then presidency of Hamid Karzai. However, that was made pointless when the United States staged a political coup to oust him because of his opposition to such a strategy (Karzai would eventually be pushed out in 2014 for current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani). And then there were those “green-on-blue” attacks where Afghanistan trainees would “frag” their U.S. trainers. The list could go on, but the point here is that there was a tremendous price to pay for little to no gain in the overall situation.

Today, the Taliban–those terrorist harboring thugs whose destruction was the initial goal way back in 2001–is negotiating with the United States in Moscow, and the two main points to these talks have been affirmed by the parties. First, the Taliban will no allow terrorist groups like al Qa’ida to have safe harbor in Afghanistan. Second, all of the troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan. Al Qa’ida still exists, though it is must less effective as a functioning organization like it was in 2001. And the Taliban is going to regain control of the government. So after 17 years of fighting and no telling how many thousands of deaths for all parties, the situation is likely to end in the same position as it would have had President Bush taken the Taliban’s offer to allow them to oust Osama bin Laden to another country instead of handing him directly to the United States.

Now to Syria. This is a much more difficult nut to crack because we really have no reason to be there aside from just stirring the multiple factions involved in that little war into killing each other. Again, some background. Syria began in Iraq when the Islamic State went from Junior Varsity to All-Pro by taking out a substantial portion of Iraq, at one point getting to roughly 20 miles from Baghdad itself. Then after being pushed out of the largest northern Iraqi city, Mosul, the Islamic State began to fall back into Syria and lose its grip on the ground it had gained in Iraq. In Syria, the United States was stuck because there was no legal authority for any U.S. military operations to occur. But that lasted only for a short while.

After the notion of providing support to the Syrian “rebels” was swatted down by Congress (thankfully) in 2012/2013, the then Obama administration decided they were going to use the weapons collected after the other little war in Libya and ship them to the “rebels” in Syria. Turns out, those “rebels” were really terrorist organizations and when they got wind of those weapons shipments ceasing, the torched the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and killed Ambassador Chris Stevens in the process. This operation, to varying degrees continued up until the Trump administration took over and ended it in 2017. What is the situation now?

As of today, Syria is still under the ravages of war. However, the Islamic State does not have the strength it did just a couple of years ago. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is still in power, the Russians are still there providing Assad forces with air cover (during the Obama administration U.S. and Russian forces would coordinate their airstrikes so as to avoid possible international incidents), and the Kurds seem to be everyone’s new sympathetic entity with which sentiment for more war can be garnered from the U.S. population. A complete cessation of U.S. military operations in Syria would not worsen the situation there by any means, but giving what the foreign policy establishment in Washington D.C. wants could be a serious problem for that region–as if that region does not have enough problems.

So the question remains: Is Trump serious about ending U.S. involvement in these two war torn countries? Frankly, it appears that Trump is serious about this but he has to fight the national security apparatus of the permanent state comprised of the Intelligence Community and the Pentagon. Trump is the commander-in-chief. He could snap his fingers and, if he wanted to remove those forces, things would have to start moving tomorrow. Unfortunately, the bureaucracy will not operate that way for Trump. It is dragging its feet, waiting, praying, that he will be gone come January 2021 and someone from the Republicrats will assume the Oval Office and allow them to continue senseless wars.

National Review writer Jonathan Tobin proves why the magazine of record for the Right has zero credibility. On Friday, November 2, he wrote a piece bemoaning the “white supremacist” sympathies of Iowa Representative Steve King. Tobin links King to “white supremacism” through King’s remarks of support for a mayoral candidate in Toronto who has, according to Tobin, “embraced a 14-word slogan, about securing a future for white people and white children, that is a popular mantra for neo-Nazis and other extremists.” (Tobin offers no indication what this “14-word slogan” is or a link through which one might go see first hand.) Tobin then does the guilt-by-association technique so popular by the lobotomized elite by stating that this mayoral candidate appeared on a show hosted by the Daily Stormer.

But here is where Tobin really goes off the deep end. After successfully linked King to this neo-Nazi Canadian, Tobin then goes on to explain King’s second sin.

The congressman has crossed the line before this. Last year, he endorsed the views of Dutch extremist Geert Wilders, saying, “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” King has also retweeted various neo-Nazi figures even as he denies any connection with such hate groups. (Emphasis added.)

For Tobin to claim Geert Wilders to be an “extremist” and connect the Dutch politician to “neo-Nazi figures” is a blatant example of sheer dishonesty by the snooty Con Inc. operatives who pollute the pages of National Review. To say that supporting Wilders is an act of “cross[ing] the line” of proper conduct by a Republican politician is an act of slander by those who desire open borders and support a neocon vision of America, the evil slayer.

First, Wilders is a staunch defender of Enlightenment values such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion in Europe at a time when European elites are not just turning their back on the intellectual tenets that made the Western world great, but they are actively outlawing public expression of those tenets. Wilders knows first hand the barbarism that runs rampant in Europe after having been tried in a court of law for merely pointing out the truths about Islam and the Hadith of Mohammad.

Second, some one should point out that National Review has “crossed the line” when, in 2016, the editors of that magazine penned a piece of support for Wilders.

Geert Wilders has something to say. More than a few of the Dutch people are interested in hearing it. A just society protects the rights of minorities, whether they be a minority of 5 percent, like the Dutch Muslims — or the minority of one man with ideas that make people with power uncomfortable. There can be no right to speak where there is a right to not be spoken about or where “giving offense” is a crime. That Dutch culture has reached the point where Islamic habits cannot be criticized without fear of criminal prosecution makes Wilders’s case for him at least as well as he ever has made it for himself.

(In this same piece, the editors of National Review mistakenly attempt to say that Wilders has his own issues with free speech because of his advocacy for banning the Koran in the Netherlands. This is the essence of fake news because what Wilders has said is that, if Europe is going to ban Mein Kampf for its anti-semitism, then it needs to ban the Koran for the same. Wilders is actually pointing out the hypocrisy of Europe’s violations of free speech with this stunt, not exposing himself to claims of hypocrisy.)

For the editors of National Review to allow Tobin to make this absurd link of Wilders to neo-Nazis speaks volumes for the type of people who work there. Maybe Tobin did not know of National Review’s own vote of confidence for Wilders in 2016 (two short years ago mind you), but the editors, to the best of my knowledge have not changed since 2016. They should have asked that Tobin take that paragraph out or find another outlet to publish it because it simply is not true.

There should be little doubt that National Review is just another cucked Con Inc. outlet through which the DC elite who identify with the Republican Party continue their unabashed attacks on the United States. These people have supported open borders–with the rare exception of Mark Kirkorian–have been mute when criticizing Bill Kristol for his statement that the “white American” needs to be replaced, and have been missing in action when it comes to supporting any real attempts to curtail illegal immigration.

Con Inc., just another avenue for the DC elite to attempt to convince Americans to support people who could not care less about the needs of those Americans. It is why I have taken to call National Review “Neutered Review.”

In 1859, when John Brown led a small band of radicals into Harper’s Ferry, VA to seize a federal armory and lead a slave rebellion into Virginia and beyond, the aftermath was said to be the “beginning of the Confederate Army.” Well, folks, there are radicals among us and they are planning legitimate violence against a segment of the population which they vehemently hate. Prior to this Civil War, do not find yourself unarmed and flatfooted. Arm yourself and be proficient in using them.

Smiling from ear to duplicitous ear, Sen. Jeff Flake (fake Republican-Ariz.) took the stage in front of a roaring crowd of #GlobalCitizens at a rock festival on Saturday. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), the chap who seems to have talked Flake into betraying his constituents and party leaders, was alongside him in a bipartisan show of support for the big fat wrench in the form of a “one-week” delay in the confirmation process for Judge Kavanaugh.

I will restate this, Flake has no integrity, no character, and no honor. He is just another DC Republican ready to sell out his country for the personal gain of being a “Maverick” and the riches that await him from the globalists. How’s that silver treating you Mr. Flake, you serpentine whore.

Now that the Senate has decided to allow the minority party run the show there, it is time to explore possible outcomes and possible solutions to those outcomes.

Jeff Flake proved that he has zero integrity. After the stirring and emotionally power defense of Judge Kavanaugh by Lindsey Graham (of all people) and Kavanaugh’s own self defense in his opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday afternoon, for Flake, or any other Republican, to fail to see what the Democrats have done is a textbook example of what it means to have no principles, no integrity, and no character. Flake is the catalyst for yet another delay in the confirmation process of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court because he conditioned his affirmation of Kavanaugh to a supplemental FBI investigation in to the issues brought up by the Ford – Fienstien operation to use a sexual assault claim as a means of preventing Kavanaugh’s confirmation. So what can we expect from this FBI investigation?

First, I think the Democrats are a little worried that the FBI is going to discover that nothing happened between Ford and Kavanaugh. That is my suspicion anyway. This is based on the fact that the Democrats could have had this wrapped up even before the first round of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee if they were truly interested in finding out what happened. Second, even if the FBI does not discover that nothing happened, there is the very likely scenario that they come away saying that, unless Ford can provide more concrete evidence beyond what she has brought forth, we cannot conclusively say that what she claims actually happened. This gets to what Senator Graham has been saying since Thursday: there is not enough in Ford’s version of events to even justify a warrant. Finally, the idea that the FBI is going to find something that destroys Kavanaugh is unlikely, in fact, I am going to say it will not happen.

The Supreme Court nomination process is broken, and it has been for a few decades. Once the Democrats understood that they could personally destroy people without any repercussions from Republicans, the standard was set. Bork and Thomas seem like a prelude to the levels of depravity that the Democrats sunk in the new century when they opposed Miguel Estrada simply because they could not allow Republicans to successfully appoint a Hispanic to the DC Circuit Court. Now they are cooking up outright lies and coordinating those lies to destroy a man who is not only well qualified but also an exemplary human being.

What I would like to see happen in this aftermath is, first, despite my utter disdain for the national GOP, for the GOP to maintain the Senate after 2018. I think they will. I do not believe that Texas and Tennessee are up for grabs despite what the polls may tell you. I also think that States like Montana, Indiana, and North Dakota are well in play. Arizona will be a closely run thing, but I think that will go GOP too. Florida is really a toss up. In the end I think the GOP maintains control of the Senate. Now, what to do with it?

If my Senate scenario plays out, we will have replaced Flake and gained enough seats to overcome any of the crap dealt from Lisa Write-In Murkowski and Susan Jellyfish Collins. Screw them. We will no longer need them. You two harlots want to vote with the other side? Go ahead. With this new Senate make-up we can put any judge on the bench we want. I say that if Kavanaugh goes down and 2019 opens with a GOP Senate that can overcome the two squish votes, Amy Coney Barrett be nominated and confirmed before February.

Second, we have got to convince Justice Thomas to step down. Yes, Thomas is wonderful. Yes, Thomas is everything we want in a modern Supreme Court justice. Yes, I think Thomas is probably the best justice on that Court in a while. But Thomas is also 70 years old. At best we can say we have 15 years until Thomas goes anyway. That means that roughly in 2035 his seat is up. That means that we have zero clue what party is going to control the Senate or the White House. However, if we come back and put a 50-something year old jurist on the bench now in his place we will have that seat not only until 2035, but beyond. This would be the make-up of the Court in that scenario: Roberts (63), Alito (68; It might be time for Alito to go too.), Gorsuch (51), Barrett (46), Amul Thurpar (49). (Thurpar is top-notch. Do not worry about him filling Thomas’s shoes.) Look at the ages of those justices. With Alito being the oldest one on that list, and the prospect of one of the two dinosaur Commie justices “retiring” in the same timeframe, the Trump Court could bring the country back to some semblance of Constitutional governance that this country has not seen since before the New Deal. It would shatter this as an avenue for Leftist policies being woven into our culture, and it would, at least from a policy/legal standpoint, stave off the very likely hood of a bloody civil war.

Kavanaugh, I think, is 50/50 right now. Had Flake now shown his true colors regarding his own character (he has none), I do not think that Murkowski and Collins would be as flimsy as they seem to be now. So Kavanaugh needs them to come on board, get three Democrat votes, or he is a goner. As someone who will have nothing to do with the national GOP ever again, I have to make one last push for the ultimate goal: SCOTUS. We need them to win in 2018 so we can win the ultimate prize for a generation.

Unless you have been hiding under a rock the past week–or a resident of France–you are certainly aware that the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have resorted to a last ditch effort to prevent the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. Initially, the Democrats whined about not having enough time to go through some 10,000 emails, in search of what they could not or would not specify. Now, having realized that their “we have not seen all the information” stunt was not going to stop the confirmation of Kavanaugh to the Court, the Democrats have gone back to a trusted tactic that gets Republicans peeing in their depends: they have found a woman willing to say that Kavanaugh raped her.

We have all seen this before. A Republican judge gets confirmed onto the DC Circuit Court 98-0 and then, when that same judge is nominated to the Supreme Court, those same Senators will split and the Democrats will begin to wring their hands about “back alley abortions” and segregated lunch counters. The reason for this? Simple: Democrats know that the only court that matters is the Supreme Court. Democrats have been able to reliably count on the Supreme Court to overturn the democratic process over the past three decades. During this time period, the Court has thwarted the democratic process on abortion restrictions, the definition of marriage within the States, and the integrity of voter registration rolls in the various States. So the threat that Kavanaugh poses to the Democrats is potentially great.

So what do they do? They do not have the votes to prevent his nomination from being voted out of committee nor do they have the votes to prevent his confirmation out of the Senate. The Democrats’ only hope was to cook something up that would persuade the Republicans to cower in fear and postpone the vote. Usually when the Democrats do this they use one of two approaches: race or sex. This time around they chose sex. It works and it is going to work this time around too, mark my words. The race aspect would not stick because there is absolutely nothing that the Democrats cold credibly hang on Kavanaugh, but sex? Oh, that is the go-to tactic in this atmosphere of #MeToo. Kavanaugh, a white male who comes from an elite background and is the member of “Satan’s Party,” is the prefect target of such a disgusting tactic. You cannot disprove a negative. How does Kavanaugh dispute this since it did not happen? Sure others will come forward and say this did not happen, but they will also likely be white males from an elite background, so their credibility with the venue that controls the narrative is going to be nil.

The Republicans are going to cave into demands. They will delay this vote. They will allow this seemingly easy win to become a debacle. This is going to make the races for the Senate in November even that much more important. Now, the Republicans could discover that they do in fact have a spine and tell the Democrats and the media to shove it. They could decide that enough is enough and give the Left in Washington DC the finger. But ask yourself this: has the GOP leadership EVER stood up to the frenzy of DC Leftist bull excrement? Hell, how do you think an independent counsel got appointed to investigate things that did not exist?

We need to get on the phone and melt the Senate switchboard down. These feckless, gutless wonders from the gelding wing of the GOP need to know that we will not accept them caving to such obvious crap from the Democrats. There is absolutely nothing to this “rape” story. This is as transparent as can be. Nine FBI background checks and “holding” onto this letter since the Summer? Are you telling me that the same FBI that can employ clandestine tactics to plant information into the Trump campaign and then turn those assets into the foundation for a FISA warrant against an American citizen cannot locate and ferret out a rape allegation in 9 attempts? If you are not screaming, “BULL****!!!,” then you have no pulse. They will respond to phone calls. We need to make our voices heard because rest assured that the wacko Left is calling.

A new study that was released is under attack because of the study’s findings. What was the topic of this study? Adolescent gender dysphoria. Why is it under attack? Because it found that many adolescents who were exposed to online chat groups that pushed transgender propaganda suddenly, without any previous inclination toward such thinking, declared themselves to have transgender tendencies.

The research was conducted by asking parents to fill out surveys that were made available through a few websites, and here is where the militant LGBTQLJKPIJ:K:JPIPOGHOHOIJ community pounced. These websites, you see, happen to be proponents of conversion therapy and therefore enemies of the Lavender Mafia. They have, so far, managed to force the school which sponsored this study to recant and they are not seeking that the study be made unavailable for anyone else to read and contemplate.

Well I encourage as many of you as possible to print this, save it to your desktop, and preserve this in any way you can so that when they convince Brown University to hold public burnings of this study and its author, we can still produce it.

Could you possibly explain in more detail the last paragraph you wrote? What exactly happened in 1787 that means today that we don’t have 50 separate states each one operating as its own fiefdom? I am not familiar with the way things went down. (And I am not disagreeing, but you seem to be able to offer up information I should be most happy to learn.)

This question was put to me on the thread of my previous post. I intend to give as thorough a response to this question as I can.

I am sure that many of you–if not all of you–had at one point in your lives agreed to an arrangement with someone whom you knew was not being honest about upholding their side of the deal. You probably hesitated, told yourself that this was not a good idea, explained internally that at the first chance the person across from you would rescind their obligations to you, but in the end you thought that if things went as planned, both you and the other side would benefit greatly. You shook hands fully with the expectation that the other party was going to uphold their word to you. And I am sure that in similar situations, the backstabbing commenced and you were left so flatfooted that you did not react until it was too late to salvage any part of the deal. Luckily for you, avenues for pulling out of such an arrangement are available. Sure there was an immediate loss, but in the end you could walk away and count the lessens you had just learned. Such was not the case for the ratifying States of the proposed Constitution of 1787.

Let us begin with one of the most prominent proponents of the Constitution in 1787, Alexander Hamilton. He is one third of the authorship of the Federalist Papers, essays that most people with even scant understanding of the founding period recognize as very important. Hamilton was no friend to the notion of the States being the supreme power in the young republic, either under the Articles of Confederation or under the Constitution then being contemplated by those very States. However, he understood that making such arguments would guarantee the Constitution’s failure during the ratification debates. So in Federalist 32, Hamilton stated bluntly:

An entire consolidation of the States into one complete national sovereignty would imply an entire subordination of the parts; and whatever powers might remain in them, would be altogether dependent on the general will. But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States. This exclusive delegation, or rather this alienation, of State sovereignty, would only exist in three cases: where the Constitution in express terms granted an exclusive authority to the Union; where it granted in one instance an authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority; and where it granted an authority to the Union, to which a similar authority in the States would be absolutely and totally CONTRADICTORY and REPUGNANT.

In this entry of our operator’s manual of the Constitution, Hamilton promises two things to those who viewed this new system suspiciously. First, he promised that the States would retain all of their sovereignty. Second, he promised that only those aspects of sovereignty that the States would surrender would be those specifically delegated to the new general government. There is no discussion of implied powers, no discussion of the Constitution being merely an outline needing to be filled in by future Congresses, nor was there any discussion of sovereignty being derived from “the people.” But all of these arguments would be put forth as justifications for chartering a national bank in 1791 and later for justifying the power to charter such corporations by the general government in 1819.

This was the very power grab that men like Patrick Henry and John Lansing warned against during the ratification. This was also the power grab that men like John Marshall said would never happen.

But the power given to the states by the people is not taken away; for the Constitution does not say so. In the Confederation Congress had this power; but the state legislatures had it also. The power of legislating given them within the ten miles square is exclusive of the states, because it is expressed to be exclusive. The truth is, that when power is given to the general legislature, if it was in the state legislature before, both shall exercise it; unless there be an incompatibility in the exercise by one to that by the other, or negative words precluding the state governments from it.

The promises made, the Constitution was ratified. The deal with the forked tongue advocates had been struck and those same rakes immediately went to work reneging. First, Hamilton would make the plea that the Constitution’s functionality relied on implied powers that would put the explicit powers into effect. Then, Marshall wrestled from the other two branches of the general government and from the States the ability to have a say in what the Constitution means. Finally, again at the hands of Marshall, the coup de gras of explaining that the States never had any sovereignty. That “the people” are paramount and anything done in their name by the general government has Constitutional backing.

Had the Liberty Minded of the founding era been at the ready, secession would have been the proper response. Instead, these fine men decided to pursue other remedies. Thomas Jefferson proposed the avenue of nullification, or state interposition on behalf of the people of the State. In 1798, in the wake of the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson along with James Madison articulated in what became known as the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions the proper response to power grabs by the general government.

Once the crisis of the Alien and Sedition Acts passed, due to the expiration of those acts in 1801 and the election of Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans in 1800, the next phase of the battle was to author various pamphlets and books explaining the real relationship between the States and the general government. This movement was led by great judicial thinkers Spencer Roane and St. George Tucker.

Roane studied law at William and Mary under the “Teacher of Liberty” George Wyth (as did Jefferson and Tucker, who would replace Wyth as the president of the law school at William and Mary), and he sat on the highest bench in Virginia, the Virginia Court of Appeals. Roane’s contribution to the battle against the double dealing came through letters to the editor of the Richmond Enquirer, a Jeffersonian newspaper started by Roane’s cousin. He viciously attacked Marshall for codifying in judicial opinions the very usurpation of power that Marshall and other Hamiltonians promised would not occur during ratification.

St. George Tucker’s greatest contribution came in the form of his thorough survey of legal thinking at the time of the founding in his Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William Blackstone and Views on the Constitution. Tucker’s Views was authored in 1803, the same year that Marbury v. Madison invented the notion that the Supreme Court of the United States was the final arbiter of what the Constitution meant. In it, Tucker explained that the Constitution was a compact between independent states and that there was no such thing as implied powers, judicial review at the federal level, or various open ended clauses that grants powers that were not spelled out in the document or explained during ratification.

Others joined the fray on the side of the Liberty Minded. Men such as John Taylor of Caroline made the arguments from positions inside the general government as elected officials. Abel Upshur would go toe to toe with one of Marshall’s gargoyles, Joseph Story, and completely dismantle the argument that the Union came before the States and that the Constitution was a construct of “the people.” And finally, there was John C. Calhoun who more than the others actually put a plan into action when he advocated for and justified the acts of nullification by the state of South Carolina against an unconstitutional tariff. The culmination would climax in November 1860 through April 1861 when eleven States voiced their frustration with the rest of the members of the Union for refusing to uphold their ends of the bargain, primarily that of sheltering and refusing to turn over for trial the perpetrators of the Harper’s Ferry uprising led by abolitionist radical John Brown. (That was one of several specific examples given detailing the outright flouting of the U.S. Constitution.)

In the end, the idea of independent states compacting to delegate specific powers to a general government would lose out to the notion that DC was the beginning and end of freedom in our system. The names associated with Liberty during the first half of the 19th century would either be forgotten or tarred as merely wanting to perpetuate slavery. But the reality is clear. We hang on the words of 9 people to decide fundamental freedoms such as the ability to arm ourselves for protection, the ability of a Christian to own and operate a business, and the ability of a duly elected president to rescind the executive orders of a previous president.

The great harm done to our liberties was the ratification of that document because the great proponents of that instrument were interested only in the economic advantages that further consolidation of power over the States would garner. The goal of economic prosperity was much more important that the principles that were sold to the skeptics of the convention of 1787, and the proponents of that convention immediately proved those skeptics correct. Now we are hobbled by corruption in the executive, sclerosis in the legislative, and oligarchical tyranny in the judiciary.

So what happened in 1787? The people of the various States made a deal with the devil that they would be able to consolidate power for the purposes of improving their economic lot in exchange for their liberty and the liberty of their progeny. What does it profit a man to exchange for 30 pieces of silver his soul? Well we can now take a look at our current situation and answer with confidence: It does not.

I am a week into my third year of law school. One of my classes this year has already convinced me that our endeavors at liberty are pointless. That class is Constitutional Law.

After two classes, we have already delved into McCulloch v. Maryland and the way in which that case is taught dispels any notion an intention on limited government. We were told, for instance, that the Constitution, according to John Marshall, was merely an outline of a government and not a conclusive, binding document on how the general government was to function. To do so, Marshall explains, would be to create a code too burdensome for the people to understand. On the face of it, this argument makes some sense, for how is the general government to borrow if it does not have the power to charter a national bank? How is it to spend if it has no bank account from which to draw revenue?

But when thinking of how the document was sold to the states, and particularly to those who have been forever known as anti-federalists, the argument that the general government was not bound by the instrument falls flat. Had Marshall made the same argument in 1787 that he made in 1819, there is no doubt that he would have been seriously rebuffed or the ratifying convention of Virginia would have said no thanks. But we are told that the limits on the general government are not really limits. That the founders really wanted some flexibility in the joints of power delegated to Congress. And here is the beginning of the decline.

A country that is said to be based on limited government with specified powers that does not adhere to those limitations from the get go–recall that our first national bank was chartered in 1791, a mere four years after ratification–is not a country based on the rule of law. And if we are to measure our liberty by how faithful our system adheres to the rule of law, then we must conclude that beginning in 1791 our liberties as a people were tenuous, and in 2018 virtually non-existent.

But we have the freedom of religion and to keep and bear arms!! For now. Both of the most recent rulings revolving around these issues were held by a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court, and one of those rulings was only made on the basis that the treatment of the aggrieved individual was too rough. Had the state agency been a little softer in their tone toward the Christian in question, it is safe to say that things would have been hunky dory and the decision would have been 5-4 the other way. And thus we enter into the fall of the United States.

You see, the centralizing powers that animate the people toward the end goal are never going to go away. There is too great a temptation for people to be written down in man’s “Book of Life” to resist dominating other men (in the general sense, not the gendered sense). We have long ago rejected the notion that we are to look to the other “Book of Life” when determining our interactions with our fellow citizen. We are now engaged in a great struggle on what it means to be free, to paraphrase that great wielder of the euphemism, Mr. Lincoln. And what it means to be free today is ensuring that your side has the levers of power, our system’s designed be damned.

We are no longer governed under the rule of law, but under the rule of power. Right now, folks we trust more than the other side have the levers of power, so we feel safe. We feel as though our freedoms have been restored. And there are plenty of bright spots to point to that would leave one believing that ours is a rising sun. However, what happens when we no longer hold those levers? What do we do then? More importantly what are they going to do when they take the levers of power back? Obama has already showed them that you can govern, at least in the short term, without having one thing go through the legislature. The damage that was inflicted by the Obama regime, will be dispensed ten fold in the next Democrat administration. What then?

I have maintained that our only hope is fostering enough liberty minded folks in our respective states’ legislatures so that when the time comes these states may interpose on behalf of their people. But it would appear that not too many others felt the urgency to take that route with the election of DJ Trump. Will it be too late the next time?

We worry about a continued fracturing of our society devolving into more intense episodes of violence and possibly rising to the level of warfare. Well, let it be known that the great truth is that had things been different in 1787, that fear would not exist today because it would be understood that we are in fact 50 separate societies, each within a different culture. There would be no need to worry about another state’s craziness being inflicted upon your state’s reasonable society. But alas it is not so. Our decline was immediate and our fall is now imminent. But you were warned. Men with names like Thomas, St. George, John, and Spencer were sounding the alarms of ruin early on and ignored. Now we are witnessing the outcome of the “judicial brilliance” that is the hypocrisy of Marshall and Hamilton. Welcome, my friends, to the fall.

This is not going to be a traditional post from me. Instead I am just going to link to a few articles and let you all make up your own minds. These articles detail in convincing fashion the reasons why anything coming out of the Mueller investigation or the intelligence community regarding the DNC server or Hillary’s emails simply cannot be true. Keep in mind the amount of information that is said to be traveling from DC to Eastern Europe when you read these articles. What the DC establishment wants you to believe simply cannot happen.

During the work week, after I have checked to see what may have come in via email over night, I like to check out PJ Media. This morning I came across a piece that is the epitome of why many “mainstream” Conservative thinkers will never lead their movement toward gaining the upper hand against the Left.

This morning’s exhibit A was from Faith Moore. Generally, she is a pretty good read for anyone who is looking for answers to the age old question: how the hell do I raise a daughter in a culture like this? Well, today was a head scratcher, and is very indicative of why many on the Right feel at their wits end when it comes to American culture.

This whole thing started a few months back when a Lefty group put out tweets on Twitter stating that Disney needs princesses who are pro-abortion, feminazi, SJWs. Well a young, Conservative lady went to Disney wearing a MAGA hat and took some pictures and tweeted them out saying that Disney needs princesses who are pro2A and #ChooseLife. Here is what Ms. Moore had to say about that:

[A]s I wrote back in March about Planned Parenthood’s tweet, using Disney princesses to push a political agenda — be it liberal or conservative — undermines the essence of what a Disney princess ought to be. A fairy tale princess is a symbolic representation of the ideal of womanhood and, as such, transcends politics. While I applaud Whitty for her desire to push back against the ridiculous Planned Parenthood tweet, I can’t agree with her methods.

And there it is: don’t engage them, surrender the battle field, and lose to lose another day. What Ms. Moore does not understand is that no matter how correct her desires may be, the simple fact of the matter is that the “Disney Princess” is now another war implement of the Left, and if we just let them have it, we will soon be treated to Disney movies where the female lead character is more than just a sassy, independent minded lady. We will get that baby crushing, man hating, SJW.

Keep in mind it is not we on the traditional side of America who went out and picked this fight. Many of us were more that happy to allow Disney corporate to engage in politics so long as its children’s programming was tolerable. But surrendering the field will create a clear path for the Left to pressure Disney into creating a character that does not push boundaries that many parents want for their children when it comes to sexuality, but it will shatter those boundaries with an in-your-face attitude.

Refusing to even present the prospects to businesses that there is half a country out there that does not want what the Left wants these companies to sell will only perpetuate the seemingly walled off nature that many traditionalists feel now. Since the election of Trump, some of that has subsided, but rest assured, if you do nothing but immerse yourself in what is presented in movies and on television, you will start to feel as though you are the only person left who thinks the way you do. The Soviets used to create these types of situations for people who wanted freedom in an attempt to create in the minds of the oppressed a sense that they are insane.

The culture is a battle field between the Cultural Marxists and the traditionalists. This past weekend was Bastile Day, a celebration of an entire population not simply overthrowing their monarch but overthrowing the entire tradition of France up to that point. We are in the midst of that very thing happening in the United States, but our Conservative “leaders” desire that we put our heads in the sand and not engage. Putting our heads in the sand will eventually lead to them being put in the guillotine.

Recently, Professor Niall Ferguson was brought to the attention of the many members of Ratburger, so I naturally like the post and professed my great admiration for Prof. Ferguson. Among his many intellectual pursuits is his insistence that the West overcame the Rest by originating, developing, and implementing what he calls “Six Killer Apps.” These killer apps are Ferguson’s way of intimating scholarly ideas to a world that speaks in emojis. These apps are competition, science, property, consumerism, work ethic, and modern medicine. (Modern medicine was an add on to his list a few years ago. I frankly think you could throw it into the science category.) Ferguson’s theory rests, not on the West’s quest for empire or geography, but on the power of ideas, and these six ideas are what made the West the premier civilization of the past 500 years. Unfortunately, the West has now began to uninstall, or at the least not update, these apps while the Rest has decided to install them, or at least a good portion of them. Western Civilization is in trouble and Prof. Ferguson thinks that the solution is for the Rest to adopt all the apps, not just some, and for the West to update them.

Ferguson begins by dispelling right off the notion that empire and geography is why there was this great divergence 500 years ago between the backwater city-kingdoms of say Paris and London and the great imperial capitals of Beijing and Mumbai. Prior to this divergence, the armies of the Ottomans repeatedly defeated the armies of the Christian world. European trade was restricted to land routes that had to deal with the Muslim world and the great Asian Steppe. But around 1500, Europeans began putting out to sea in great vessels capable of handling the rough waters of the Atlantic, opening up new markets of trade and raw materials. Europeans armies battled back at the gates of Vienna and closed out the Ottomans from Eastern and Central Europe for the remainder of the millennium. These events that began roughly at 1500 were the products primarily of reason, and specifically those six attributes that were borne out of that reason. Ferguson’s two biggest test cases to dispel the theory of geography being the reason are post-War Germany and the Korean Peninsula. Both occupied the same geographic area and the same cultural norms, but when it came to separating them by economic and societal systems, two completely different scenarios played out. And the theory of empire is relegated to the trash heap because, as Ferguson puts it, “empire is the least original thing the West ever did.”

Competition is explained as the idea that allows for the best of society to rise to the top. Whether those be ideas, material goods, or institutions, they have gone through the refining aspect of competition and sustained the changes demanded by those things which seemed fresh and new. But competition needs free and open markets in order to reach its full potential, and the West has steadily, since reaching its peak of free-market capitalism, moved away from free-market economics. In general terms, among those on the Conservative side of the spectrum, there is little doubt that allowing labor unions to dictate terms to employers, allowing a national, centralized government to dictate terms related to work conditions to employers, and the artificial propping up of those who simply do not work are generalized examples of moving away from free-markets and reducing the much needed environment in which competition thrives.

In some respects competition has been downloaded and uploaded by many parts of the developing world. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2017 analysis, “Emerging-market and developing economies are anticipated to grow 4.1% – far faster than advanced economies.” Certainly some of these countries in this category do not necessarily fit into what Prof. Ferguson would describe as free-markets, but one cannot miss specific free-market acts taken by these countries that coincide with their upward economic trends. For instance, Nepal is the third fastest growing economy on the planet, and, while Nepal has reached this level of growth, it has also normalized trade with India–one of the largest markets on the planet with increased purchasing power.

Possibly the two most important “apps” Ferguson brings to our attention are property and work ethic. Now it may not be fair to put any weight on any combination of “apps” over any others, but in my opinion a free society cannot exist without the ability to own and pass down property without interference from a ruler and the freedom to reap the production from that property. I am going to give some personal anecdotes in this segment to illustrate what property and work ethic can do for a society. In Washington DC–or any other major city in the Western world really–you can see an absence of these two very key aspects to Western Civilization. On my drive to class at Catholic University, you can witness the transition from those areas that are owned by businesses and government to those where there is absolutely zero ownership and no work ethic. Sometimes, at 3 pm in the middle of the workweek, you can see clusters of men on the sidewalk in dress that is anything but professional (hell I would not even consider it casual). The buildings are dilapidated with cracks running through the masonry that originates from the turn of the last century and woodwork probably just as old falling off them. There is rubbish strewn throughout the streets. You can see that in areas there are signs of what is called re-gentrification (or as I like to call it, recivilization). And you can be sure that similar scenes are replicated all throughout DC and major cities in the West in general. The West is losing its desire to have property and its work ethic to ensure that property was worthy of protecting. In fact, the West is skeptical of private ownership of property. The West has also decided that who puts the work into the property generating the property’s value is best left to the government, just visit New London, Connecticut.

I encourage all of you to take a long, hard look at Prof. Ferguson. The West has many problems related to its sclerotic civilization running out of steam, but it does not have to be this way. The West is going to come back stronger than ever, not by making any one part of itself great again, but by recognizing that what made it great to begin with need to be resuscitated and revitalized. The Rest is not coming up with a new societal order; it is relying on the West not maintaining the “killer apps” that the West created. The Rest thinks it can take one or two of these apps and surpass the West, but what the Rest need to realize is that you need all six of the apps working in tandem. The West has forgotten that too, but all the West needs to do is hit “update.”

When I was a regular at that other site, I found myself caught up in what became the tail end of the great “Gay Marriage Wars.” I can recall those exchanges getting heated. I can also recall members of that other site saying certain things that were happening in places like Canada or Europe would never happen here. One such comment was leveled at my assertion that, after homosexual marriage were made legal, Christians seeking to adopt children would be made to either ensure that the children were not told of the religious doctrine about homosexuality or those parents would be prohibited from adoption. Well, guess what? I told you so.

I would love to be able to go on that other site and make sure that the person who lambasted me for making such a prediction saw this story because he was so devastatingly wrong. The only conclusion to homosexual becoming “legal” through the court system–the way it in fact happened here in the United States–was for the once Constitutionally guaranteed rights of Christians to be curtailed or outright denied.

The logic behind Obergerfel is taught in Con Law class as a “restriction by the State of a fundamental right.” But the actual reasoning behind Obergerfel is that restrictions on homosexuality were based on nothing more than hatred of those who fought for so long to keep marriage between a man and a woman. Well if the legal “reasoning” is going to be “we are overturning the will of hateful people,” then it only stands to reason that attacking the rights of those same “hateful people” would follow.

And so it is in Philadelphia, PA, where the city has told a Catholic organization with a great record of placing foster children in good, loving homes has been denied by the city government from participating in the fostering process. Why? Because this Catholic group places children in families based on Catholic teachings about homosexuality. From Anthony Kennedy’s point of view, they place children based on hatred.

We realize that you are the base of the GOP during the general election, and for that we are extremely grateful. We recognize that you bring a zeal and a passion to the electoral process that allows candidates to have campaign workers and volunteers. But we also recognize that some of you are just too stupid to allow us in Con Inc the ability to decide who those candidates should be.

You all seem to want people who will no longer throw overboard the ideas and ideals that we at Con Inc have been selling you since God and Man at Yale when faced with the really tough decisions of politics at the general government level. You seem to want people who will actually make a case for you, in DC no less, where many of us live and have to come face to face with people like F. Chuck Todd or even James Comey. We just don’t understand what the big deal is. I mean we hear you make complaints about neighborhoods being devastated by illegal immigration, the cost of living going up because of the growth of the national debt, or even the hassles that some of you have to endure when operating your own businesses, like a bakery. But where we are in Bethesda, Maryland (J. Goldberg, NR), Chevy Chase, Maryland (George Will), or Great Falls, VA (Mona Charen) things couldn’t better. I mean we are making money hand over fist what with out book deals, weekly columns, and the checks we get as a pundit for cable news outlets. Hell, Mona doesn’t even have to worry thanks to her husband, Robert P. Parker, a Washington, D.C. lawyer.

What we are trying to say is that we no longer want you involved with the process of choosing GOP candidates. Hell it was bad enough that you inflicted on us all Donald J. Trump, but then when he won it seemed like you could just pick whomever you wanted, like Roy Moore. Now you are entertaining the idea of picking a guy in West Virginia who spent time in jail. Just stop. You people are just too stupid to understand how great politicians like John McCain or Mitt Romney are and we would like you to get on board with what we have planned for your country or we will remove you from the nomination process.